Ironic Tory roars greeted Miliband’s ascent to the vertical at PMQs today. He assumed his habitual spanked puppy look. It’s quite a sight, Ed’s expression of frosty endurance. Part dismay, part weariness, part moral indignation, it makes him look like a nun who’s just discovered her favourite choirboy reading a porn mag.
On went the jeering and the cheering, and a change overcame Miliband’s mug. ‘I’ve got a joke for them,’ he remembered. His face softened. His eyes brightened. An experimental smirk stole across his lips. Then it hardened into a grin. And out came the quip.
‘Let’s see if they’re still cheering on Friday.’
Cameron improvised fast.
‘I make this prediction. The people behind me will still be cheering him on Friday.’
This is the paradox. Miliband is desperate for Miliband to survive. And so is Cameron. The recovery may be proving voteless but the Labour leader isn’t. Gravely wounded by recent conspiracies he remains the Tories’ best asset and Cameron is keen to preserve the ‘stable-but-critical’ reading on the patient’s bed-stead. Rather than debate with him today he preferred to goad him with anonymous jibes.
‘He’s been called useless, hopeless, out of his depth, an absolute disaster. And that’s just what the front bench think.’
Miliband played his strongest cards. On healthcare he decided to give his new pet-soundbite an airing.
‘The NHS is going backwards on his watch.’
Peculiar phrase. It conjures the image of an ambulance reversing over a Rolex. And Miliband seems aware that he faces long-term difficulties posing as the guardian of the NHS, (Mid-Staffs, Wales), so he moved with evident relief to the bedroom tax. Here’s a flagship policy that has ‘evil Tory’ stamped across its forehead. And Labour’s back-room boys have been busy refining, sharpening and personalising the issue. Enter the victim.
A woman being menaced by her violent ex-lover is being charged extra for an emergency panic-room in her home.
‘Can he remind us,’ said Miliband, ‘why it’s the right thing to do?’
Cameron cited ‘discretionary housing payments’ for cases like this. Miliband nearly exploded with karaoke horror.
‘Protecting victims of domestic violence shouldn’t be a matter of discretion,’ he frothed. ‘It’s a matter of principle.’
Clearly, in this woman’s case, the space available is being wrongly allocated. If the offender were given a jail cell, his victim won’t need to extend her property with a thug-proof annex.
But this is dangerous territory for the PM. His ‘discretionary payment’ answer will be used to clobber him again. And Labour are clearly thrilled with their brainwave that the bedroom tax is a surcharge on rape victims. It’s a false line, and an ugly one too. And it’s highly inflammatory. So it has the makings of a vote-winner.
Miliband finished with a fresh take on his ‘out of touch Tory’ slogan. ‘If you’ve got big money you’ve got a friend in the prime minister.’
But it’s Labour who are increasingly detached from the workers they claim to represent. The plots and manouevres of the last fortnight culminated in a single issue: could they persuade a postman to assume the party leadership? And the answer was no. How out of touch is that?
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